Rules

As this site is still a fledgling, I’m feeling my way with regard to rules.

So I’m going to start a bit vague, then get more specific as need arises.The principle is in the strapline: Park your priors by the door.  Everyone has priors, they are crucial to way we make sense of the world.  But the impetus behind this site is to be a place where they can be loosened and adjusted while you wait.  So leave them by the door, and pick them up again as you leave!

There are plenty of blogs and forums where people with like priors can hang out and scoff at those who do not share them.  There’s nothing wrong with those sites, and I’ve learned a lot from them. But the idea here is to provide a venue where people with very different priors can come to discover what common ground we share; what misunderstandings of other views we hold; and, having cleared away the straw men, find out where our real differences lie.  In my experience, when you reach that point, who is right becomes obvious to both parties 🙂

Edited 1/12/15 to change from third to first person plural.

 

So draft rules:

  • Assume all other posters are posting in good faith.
    • For example, do not accuse other posters of being deliberately misleading
  • Do not use turn this site into as a peanut gallery for observing the antics on other boards. (there are plenty of places on the web where you can do that!)
  • Address the content of the post, not the perceived failings of the poster. [purple text added 28th November 2015]
    • This means that accusing others of ignorance or stupidity is off topic
    • As is implying that other posters are mentally ill or demented.
  • Don’t advocate illegal activities.
  • Don’t post porn, or links to porn, or any material liable to risk the integrity of another poster’s computer*.

ETA 8th September 2013

  • If you have author permissions, and post an OP, you may find you have the technical ability to edit comments to your post, and move them.  Please do not do so.  Rule violating posts will be moved by moderators, and it is a principle of this site that comments are not edited, deleted, or hidden.

ETA 27th January 2014

  • Don’t use this site to try to “out” other internet denizens or indulge in ad hominem speculations.  Such speculations may, notwithstanding general principles regarding deletion, be deleted. ETA 13th June 2015: please read the guidlines in ETA6 below and note that the rule applies even if the person in question has made the information possible to find out)

That’ll do for starters!

Posts won’t be moderated unless I find there’s a problem – if your post is held in moderation it’ll just be because the spam filter caught it.

If you want to post OPs, let me know and I’ll register you as a Subscriber.  That means your OPs will be held in moderation until I click the publish button.  If all goes well, I’ll push people up to Author.

One last thing – I’ve set the nesting for threaded comments to be quite deep, because I like nested sites – derails are much less of a problem and I’m an inveterate derailer.  So use the nesting if it suits your post i.e. if you are replying to a specific post rather than making a general point re the OP.

And thanks for coming!

Lizzie

ETA: I’ve added the coloured text above for clarity (22.2.2012)

ETA2: Blue text added above for clarity (7.05.2012)

ETA3: New rule added in purple (12.05.2012)

ETA4: *Violation of rule in purple will result in immediate and permanent ban (14.05.2012)

ETA5: Peanut rule gallery relaxed a little (5th November 2012)

 ETA6, June 13th, 2015): Below is a copy&paste from a a post of mine in a discussion regarding the outing rule:

It is part of the founding philosophy of TSZ that no-one “deserves” to be banned. People are banned for one reason only: to ensure that we don’t get posts containing the very narrow range of material that is not allowed here, namely porn/malware (or links to); and material that gives the RL identity of people known to us by their internet names, without their permission (also known, I understand, as “doxxing”).

There are a couple of grey areas regarding that last one but I think I have made the boundaries clear, and will try to make them clearer still:

Firstly: If someone has made it clear who they are in RL, e.g. by linking to their publications, that is fine, and it is still fine for others to acknowledge the identity if their publications are being discussed. However, it is not OK to use that person’s RL name in personal attacks, which are against the game-rules anyway (“assume the other person is posting in good faith”; “address the argument, not the person”) but are not in themselves things I would ever ban anyone for. Such posts just get moved to guano, just as pieces get moved off a chess board. But if in breaking those rules, you invoke someone’s personal ID, that is not on, the reason being that I don’t want such personal attacks here to come up in a google search of that person’s RL name, as such things happen, as I know to my cost.

Secondly, if the person in here is not a regular poster here, but is nonetheless effectively party to the conversations we often have by loud-hailer as it were, at another site, then membership protections apply. In any case, in the case of kairosfocus, I think he is, or was, a registered member here, and you easily can’t tell in any case. So if in doubt, assume membership, either actual or virtual, and don’t link identity with internet handle. In other words, do not post the RL identities of people with whom our personal relations, as it were, are in their internet identities.

ETA 29th November, 2015:

This post by Reciprocating Bill sums up the ethos of the site brilliantly so I’m quoting it here:

Participation at this site entails obligations similar to those that attend playing a game. While there is no objective moral obligation to answer questions, the site has aims, rules and informal stakeholders, just as football has same. When violations of those aims and rules are perceived and/or the enforcement of same is seen as arbitrary or inconsistent, differences and conflicts arise. No resort to objective morality, yet perfectly comprehensible and appropriate opprobrium.

13th December 2015:

This post by DNA_Jock sums up how the implementation of the rules essentially works, and how I think it should work.  If you think it doesn’t, let us know:

DNA_Jock:

walto: it’s arbitrary and capricious which posts get guanoed

I think not. It is stochastic.
Things that increase vs. decrease the probability of guanoing:
1 Clearly breaks rules vs. may be interpreted as rule-breaking.
2 Guanoing requested vs. Target requests post not be guanoed
3 Author perceived to be “home” side vs. Author perceived to be “visitor”
4 Target perceived to be “visitor” vs. Target is an admin
5 Substantive content is low vs. Substantive content is high
6 Derailing active discussion vs. ancient bloody history.
As to the relative importance of the different factors, YMMV.
<snip irrelevant bit>
Discrete-choice modeling, it’s fun.

ETA (by AF) 23.01.20 — TSZ Policy on Racism (as stated by EL here)

I do not want racist material on this site. Like porn, it should be deleted immediately (not moved to Guano).

The poster should be warned, and if there is ONE further violation, then the poster should be banned…

…That is my policy. There is a very short list of things that I simply do not want, and will not have on this site, and racist material is one of them.

410 thoughts on “Rules”

  1. “I think you used rather poor judgment and objected to far too many comments.”

    Neil, did you overturn any of my mod. flags? They all went to either sandbox cont’d or Guano, did they not, without exception?

  2. Gregory: Disallowing moderation flagging by ‘authors’ would be to effectively take away all ‘author’ influence over a thread and give them instead to ‘regular’ posters, who have not contributed the OP.

    Neil Rickert: That’s the way it is in most Internet forums.

    The author is, almost by definition, a biased participant, so should not be making moderation decisions.

    That said, I do appreciate that you put some comments in moderation, rather than deleting them.But, personally, I think you used rather poor judgment and objected to far too many comments.And, by doing so, you generated a reaction.

    I agree with Neil. Authors should not, in my opinion, mark comments for moderation (thereby making them invisible) or move them to other threads. This has too much potential for abuse and disrupts the discussion even when not abused.

    When you have a moment, Lizzie, it would be helpful if you would share your views on how, or if, authors should manage the comments related to their articles.

  3. Gregory:
    “I think you used rather poor judgment and objected to far too many comments.”

    Neil, did you overturn any of my mod. flags? They all went to either sandbox cont’d or Guano, did they not, without exception?

    In my opinion, Neil was overly gracious in moving the comments you flagged into different threads (aside from one that was more appropriate for Guano). If you feel that a comment is off-topic, you can either note that or ignore it and move on.

    I value free and open discussion, even when it gets messy. “Moderating” a thread puts that openness at risk, even when done with the best of intentions.

    Of course, we are all Lizzie’s guests here, so I will abide by any guidelines she sets.

  4. Gregory: Neil, did you overturn any of my mod. flags? They all went to either sandbox cont’d or Guano, did they not, without exception?

    I moved them all, in order to protect the comments from further interference by an author whom I saw as exercising poor judgment.

  6. Interesting that of all the OP authors here Gregory is the only one who keeps getting flagged for abusing the moderation privileges in his attempts to silence his critics. He’s done it multiple times now to multiple different responders despite being warned. I submit that’s concrete evidence of his lack of good faith in these discussions and ask again why he is allowed to retain those privileges.

  8. Neil, I’d rather just wait for Lizzie’s decision, after Alan’s valuable comments. I’m trying to play by the rules and don’t appreciate your attacking me with claims of ‘poor judgment’ when the rules are not (yet) clear.

    And really, didn’t you think sandbox (cont’d) or Guano is due for thorton’s “you continually act like a horse’s ass” or calling me a “willfully ignorant troll,” Neil? Seriously?! Sad if you don’t think that’s where such comments belong. You do and you did, which is why you should stop attacking me for keeping a thread on-topic and clean.

  11. Patrick: Neil Rickert: That’s the way it is in most Internet forums.

    The author is, almost by definition, a biased participant, so should not be making moderation decisions.

    That said, I do appreciate that you put some comments in moderation, rather than deleting them.But, personally, I think you used rather poor judgment and objected to far too many comments.And, by doing so, you generated a reaction.

    I agree with Neil.Authors should not, in my opinion, mark comments for moderation (thereby making them invisible) or move them to other threads.This has too much potential for abuse and disrupts the discussion even when not abused.

    When you have a moment, Lizzie, it would be helpful if you would share your views on how, or if, authors should manage the comments related to their articles.

    They shouldn’t at all. As soon as I can figure out how to remove that functionality from the “author” category, I’ll do so 🙂

  12. Lizzie: I agree with Neil.Authors should not, in my opinion, mark comments for moderation (thereby making them invisible) or move them to other threads.This has too much potential for abuse and disrupts the discussion even when not abused.

    I have no problem with that, esp. in light of the error in judgment I made with Barry’s posts in one of “my” threads. Though I would like clarification on one issue: if an author is of the considered opinion that a comment ought to be moderated, how would he or she convey his or her opinion to the moderators? And the moderators disagree, does the author have a right of appeal?

  13. That’s an excellent question, KN. It would be good to have some kind of “alert” system.

    I’ll look into it. But not till the week after next!

  14. As I agreed, it’s Lizzie’s decision. It seems like she is opting for a two-tiered system.

    “Lizzie, Neil, Patrick, Mark, eigenstate and me (Alan Fox)” have privileges to ‘move’ that no-one else has. Iow, ‘authors’ are granted no privileges.

    “The author is, almost by definition, a biased participant, so should not be making moderation decisions.”

    *ALL* participants are biased, including authors & moderators. The key is opting to privilege commentators rather than authors. Lizzie is in the midst of or has already made her choice. There are many ways of doing this on-line.

    Nevertheless, I’d like this question addressed:
    It is your choice to make, Lizzie, of course, since it’s your site. But realise there are people that wish to abuse the system, who are not thread authors. E.g. http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=3601&cpage=1#comment-34870
    “This will get moved to guano but…”

    Or this: http://theskepticalzone.com/wp/?p=3552&cpage=2#comment-34794
    “Since my previous comment is likely to go to guano, I will rephrase my comment to make it less offensive.”

    Is this not an abuse of TSZ system?

    I’ve been called ‘asshole,’ ‘worthless’ and a whole lot of other names by the gracious ‘skeptics’ here at TSZ. In this case, simply for inquiring about Darwin’s errors.

    And mods actually think the second link above is acceptable for TSZ?! Sad. C’mon Lizzie, it seemed you had higher standards than that.

  15. Wow Greg, you want some cheese with that whine?

    Here’s a hint – playing the poor persecuted victim will be as effective as your previous disingenuous attempts at censorship.

  16. Joe Felsenstein:
    Good. So far it’s not a big problem. Don’t let this get in the way of enjoying the conference, and its location.

    Strange. There seems to be some configuration problem.

    Because comment I am replying to is listed as by me, but it is most certainly not posted by me. I don’t even know what “conference” is referred to.

    Lizzie: what’s up?

  17. Gregory: “Lizzie, Neil, Patrick, Mark, eigenstate and me (Alan Fox)” have privileges to ‘move’ that no-one else has. Iow, ‘authors’ are granted no privileges.

    A comment on that:

    I take it that for any thread where I am author, I should leave moderation decisions to others. I should not attempt to self-moderate my own thread.

  18. Joe Felsenstein:
    Good. So far it’s not a big problem. Don’t let this get in the way of enjoying the conference, and its location.

    Wow, worser and worser. A comment appears by me, only it isn’t at all from me.

    I write a reply saying that. It appears in the list of recent comments on the front page, but the reply actually isn’t found anywhere! Wonder what will happen to this one?

    Be afraid, be very afraid.

  19. Joe Felsenstein: Wow, worser and worser. A comment appears by me, only it isn’t at all from me.

    The quote is of a comment on June 07, 2012. It does seem to be from you, though there was a time when the site was hacked and user id numbers got shuffled.

    The particular link was to comment #14389. Currently we are at around comment #34953. (Yes, all comments seem to be numbered sequentially).

    I’m not sure what got messed up.

  20. Sorry your thread didn’t turn out like you wanted, Gregory. Might want to change your engagement style ?

  21. Neil Rickert: A comment on that:

    I take it that for any thread where I am author, I should leave moderation decisions to others.I should not attempt to self-moderate my own thread.

    I’m a moderator on another forum, and moderators and admins are not allowed to post on threads where they are moderating, and not allowed to moderate in any situation in which they have been party to a controversy.

  22. Neil Rickert: The quote is of a comment on June 07, 2012.It does seem to be from you, though there was a time when the site was hacked and user id numbers got shuffled.

    The particular link was to comment #14389.Currently we are at around comment #34953.(Yes, all comments seem to be numbered sequentially).

    Sorry, all this seems to be me happening on an old page of comments and thinking they were new. My bad.

  23. Folding posts

    This has to do with posts (new threads), not comments.

    When you are editing a post, there’s a button on the top row of the editor window, which looks a bit like the bottom of a page followed by a dotted line and followed by the top of another page. Okay, maybe it takes imagination to see it that way. If you hold the mouse over that button, the text “Insert more tag” appears.

    Position your cursor where you want to fold, then click that button.

    If you change your mind, you can delete the tag, then reinsert elsewhere.

    As far as I know, it is an unofficial tag that is interpreted by the wordpress software rather than by the readers browser. In text mode, it looks like:
    <!–more–>

    Where to fold is the author’s judgment. If you forget, a moderator might do it for you. Generally after around 2-3 paragraphs is good. It prevents a single post from dominating the front page.

  25. I agree with Gregory that “all” authors and moderators are biased. But that’s as far as it goes. I agree that authors should not be moderating their own threads. And I think that moderating decisions should be handed to a few individuals who have proven themselves capable over time of enough emotional maturity and good judgement to be able to control their biases and ideally, collaborate with other moderators when possible to decide on what course of action, if any, need be taken.

    I’m happy with the current arrangement.

  26. A comment by Steve was flagged as spam, and I regret that I did not notice it for more than a day. This is intended to draw your attention to it, since it is old enough that it won’t show on the front page list.

    And a note to Alan. I am going to go back to deleting spam more often. There were 20 spam messages yesterday, and Steve’s message was hidden by the deluge. I prefer to delete clear spam quickly, so that it is easy to spot messages that are wrongly flagged as spam. Fortunately, there are few of those.

  29. We had a different implementation before.

    Now, it seems that the trick is to put “[latexpage]” (without the quotes) somewhere on the page, then enclose the equation in the usual “$” marks. I’m not quite sure what “somewhere on the page” entails.

  31. Yes, we lost the old latex plug in in the hack, and I couldn’t remember which one it had been, so I tried this one.

  35. Mike Elzinga:

    This is a test.

    I used standard AMS LaTex between dollar signs.

    I am now checking to see what happens to a quote in a reply.

    It appears that the editor strips the dollars signs off in a quote.

  36. Checking to see if this wasn’t a fluke

    R_{Earth} \frac{{\int_1^\infty {xe^{\frac{{mgR_{Earth} }} {{kTx}}} dx} }} {{\int_1^\infty {e^{\frac{{mgR_{Earth} }} {{kTx}}} dx} }}

    Yeah; when quoting something with math in it, the editor strips the dollar signs from the math in the quote. The result is that the math doesn’t get quoted.

    The editor puts in a bunch of information that the math was rendered with QuickLaTex; but the dollar signs are gone.

  38. Mike Elzinga:

    This is a test.

    R_{Earth} \frac{{\int_{R_{Earth} }^\infty{xe^{\frac{{mgR_{Earth} }} {{kTx}}} dx} }} {{\int_{R_{Earth} }^\infty{e^{\frac{{mgR_{Earth} }} {{kTx}}} dx} }}

    Trying again. It appears that not all of the latex material gets quoted. The editor not only strips out the dollar signs out of the quoted math, it removes part of the math as well.

  39. Ok, it worked that time but I didn’t try to edit the equation. I must have deleted something I didn’t intend to delete when I tried to change the lower limits in the integrals.

    So standard AMS LaTex works as long as one places the brackeded “latexpage” before the LaTex. You have to remove the material added to the quote, put in the dollar signs, and make sure you put in the bracked “latexpage”.

  40. I attempt to make serious replies to posts. At least half of thortons posts are just snark rubbish replies telling people he thinks they are dumb. Its not even couched in the context of a real reply, he just blurts out half sentences of junk. They do absolutely zero to further conversations. I think the whole point of forum rules is to prevent behavior like his.

  41. phoodoo:
    I attempt to make serious replies to posts.At least half of thortons posts are just snark rubbish replies telling people he thinks they are dumb.Its not even couched in the context of a real reply, he just blurts out half sentences of junk. They do absolutely zero to further conversations.I think the whole point of forum rules is to prevent behavior like his.

    And this post is in no way whatsoever in accordance with the supposed rules of this forum.

    If your ego is so fragile it can’t handle people refuting your silly assertions maybe you should stick to Creationist forums.

  42. phoodoo: At least half of thortons posts are just snark rubbish replies telling people he thinks they are dumb.

    I would prefer that thorton try to give thoughtful replies, rather than quick reaction. And I have the same preference for you.

  43. It would be really cool to have a link at the bottom of every page that returns you to the top. My second wish would be a link at the top that takes you to the bottom.

    Some browsers require you to scroll to the top before refreshing. This is particularly onerous on tablets.

  44. I’ve done something I don’t usually do, and deleted a post, which means that the comments on it were deleted too.

    I’ve also removed posting access from the poster, who seems to be having some issues right now. He is known to me, though – it wasn’t a hack.

  45. Because it really bugs me to delete stuff, the comments are now in Sandbox, and the content of Schneibster’s OP pasted into a comment by me.

  46. Alan Fox: phoodoo: Until someone shows the completed stats of each generation as I have explained, just claiming the math is good is pointless. You people seem to spend a whole lot of time making assertions about the value of your formulas, instead of just presenting the data and letting anyone see how good it looks.

    Write your own damn code, phoodoo, and investigate the output till your heart’s content. And if you are lazy or incompetent, politely ask others to share their results. No one here owes you anything.

    You mean you moved MY reply to this nonsense and you kept this here? This one was acceptable?

    Have you not even the slightest bit of shame Alan? Are you not even embarrassed by your own pathetic double standards? What level of unmitigated gall do you possess anyway?

  47. Alan Fox: With respect phoodoo, that is not true. To be specific, you have to at least indicate which results you are referring to and what makes them ludicrous, in your view.

    ETA someone else must have moved the comment I was responding to into guano. I’ll pu this there too as it makes no sense to leave it in the original thread.

    You are not qualified to make any comments about what an acceptable reply is. You have already demonstrated quite clearly your inability to be an impartial arbitrator of any discussions whatsoever.

  48. Alan,

    phoodoo’s comment that you thought someone has moved to Guano isn’t there. I intended to move it to Guano but I it turned out that I don’t have that privilege.

    I then marked the comment for moderation, clicked Undo, and the comment was gone.

    Someone might want to investigate.

  49. phoodoo,

    Rules is rules. Rule one is “treat all others as if they are posting in good faith” Doesn’t mean you have to believe it. You are not being censored and your comments have not been deleted. You have the option to repost. I’d welcome any third party input on whether my judgement has been poor and what was the better option.

  50. Thanks for that Oleg. Must be a glitch. I wasn’t going to move that particular comment

    Apologies to phoodoo. Unfortunately the only recoverable part of that comment is the bit I quoted. That is annoying.

    ETA I think it may have something to do with the caching that is incompatible with the “move comments” plugin. I realise I have a copy of the lost comment in my RSS folder. I’ll repost it.

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